Patriots’ Gilpin runs wild over Redskins
Who said Friday the 13th is unlucky? Certainly not the Veterans Memorial Patriots football team as they claimed their second Bi-district championship in as many years against the Donna Redskins Friday night. And certainly not Patriots’ freshman quarterback Landry Gilpin as he ran wild over the previously undefeated Redskins en route to scoring four touchdowns on the ground and completing a 26-yard pass to Roman De Leon for the Patriots only other touchdown of the night.
While the official stats are not yet available, one media report had Gilpin rushing for a school record of 290 yards against the Redskins, including a 47-yard touchdown run and a sixty nine yard run from the Patriots’ own 1-yard line to the Redskins 30, both in the third quarter.
The Patriots jumped out to an early 13-0 first quarter lead before the Redskins’ offense came to life with two second quarter touchdowns to take a 14-13 lead. However the Patriots regained the lead with only 48 seconds remaining in the first half when Gilpin ran the ball into the endzone from nine yards out on a fourth and two play. That made the score 19-14 Patriots at the intermission.
The Patriots padded their lead to 33-14 with two third quarter touchdowns before Donna closed out the scoring late in the game to make the final score 33-21.
After the game Gilpin commented on how it felt to win his first-ever playoff game when he said, “This is exciting for me and it’s exciting for the team. Everybody did their part and it was a great team effort. I’m just excited that we got the win and that now we’re going to the second round of the playoffs.”
Having seen their early lead disappear, much like it did the previous week when the Patriots lost their district finale against Edinburg Vela, Gilpin shared what made this game different.
“We’d already experienced the Vela game and we didn’t want to experience it twice, so at halftime we really focused in on getting a stop on defense and then scoring on offense and that’s what we set out to do and what we accomplished,” shared Gilpin.
Next up for the Patriots will be the winner of Saturday’s Victoria West vs Nixon Bi-district round game with the day, time and location of that Area Round game to be determined later.
